How long does a game take you?

[Scraper]

I've just come back to Angband after a long hiatus and was wondering how long it usually takes to finish (win) a game.

My play style is to scour most of every level and return to town when my bags are full or my stacks of consumables are starting to run low.

I have only managed to beat the game once but I find it takes me several weeks if not months to get to cL50 and be in a position to think about taking on the much harder uniques.

What are your styles and how long does it take you to win?

[Pete Mack]

I've just come back to Angband after a long hiatus and was wondering how long it usually takes to finish (win) a game.

My play style is to scour most of every level and return to town when my bags are full or my stacks of consumables are starting to run low.

I have only managed to beat the game once but I find it takes me several weeks if not months to get to cL50 and be in a position to think about taking on the much harder uniques.

What are your styles and how long does it take you to win?

About 12-24 hours total play time.
Dive quickly; level up occasionally on "good" levels, where "good" is contingent on current stats, equipment, character level, etc.

[Scraper]

About 12-24 hours total play time.
Dive quickly; level up occasionally on "good" levels, where "good" is contingent on current stats, equipment, character level, etc.

Wow, that is really fast. I wasn't expecting people to be able to finish the game so quickly. It can take me hours and hours to get through a vault. Even to the point of taking me several sessions to completely knock over a vault.

[Narvius]

I don't think I'd want to spend so much time on a single character. xD I haven't won yet, but the one time I reached Morgoth I probably played around 20-25 hours. Which made me just realize the ungodly amount of time I spent on this game already. :x

[Timo Pietilä]

About 12-24 hours total play time.
Dive quickly; level up occasionally on "good" levels, where "good" is contingent on current stats, equipment, character level, etc.

I'm not diver, but it takes about 20 +-4 hours real time for me too. It depends quite a lot about your early luck. I also use way too much time deeper in dungeon, I'm usually about 5x overprepared when I finally face M.

[Pete Mack]

Wow, that is really fast. I wasn't expecting people to be able to finish the game so quickly. It can take me hours and hours to get through a vault. Even to the point of taking me several sessions to completely knock over a vault.

If a vault is sufficiently scary to require hours to complete, I will just skip it as an unacceptable risk/reward.

[Estie]

12-24 hours sounds about right, where 24 hours might be an ironman run.

Are you making heavy use of macros ? When you say it takes you days to clear a vault, I suspect that you use many manual casts. For example, for me detect traps is always mapped to the F5 key, regardless of class; a warrior might zap a rod, while a caster use their spell from a book. Almost all keys not used by the game are mapped to something (and even one that is; I map F (fuel light) to teleport other eventually, assuming that normally I have a permanent source of light before making heavy use of TO). That allows me to play without looking at the keyboard, like piano.

[Scraper]

12-24 hours sounds about right, where 24 hours might be an ironman run.

Are you making heavy use of macros ? When you say it takes you days to clear a vault, I suspect that you use many manual casts. For example, for me detect traps is always mapped to the F5 key, regardless of class; a warrior might zap a rod, while a caster use their spell from a book. Almost all keys not used by the game are mapped to something (and even one that is; I map F (fuel light) to teleport other eventually, assuming that normally I have a permanent source of light before making heavy use of TO). That allows me to play without looking at the keyboard, like piano.

I don't use macros at all. I only started inscribing items in the last game I played too. I do everything manually. I will look into when I play next though. Sounds like it would be faster.

[eMeM]

I'm not sure, because I don't look at clock when I play. I guess it's 30-50 hours.

[MattB]

For me most of my characters last a week, which I guess equates to about 35 hours play, and they usually die about two thirds of the way through the dungeon. On that basis I suppose about 50-60 hours real time for a win. Mind you, in my one and only win, the Morgoth battle took about three hours.

However, sometimes things move a lot faster than others. Here's page 1 of my Hall of Fame for v3.4.1 and while there is very consistent failure, look at the turn count. Four of them almost exactly the same and one of them about half of the others. Just goes to show...something.

[scud]

Mind you, in my one and only win, the Morgoth battle took about three hours.

:jawdropsmiley:

[fizzix]

15 hours 59 minutes and 25 seconds (including 7 minute epilogue.)

[Timo Pietilä]

15 hours 59 minutes and 25 seconds (including 7 minute epilogue.)

You recorder an session?

[Derakon]

He recorded Elly, the latest competition, and won.

For my part, I don't measure how long I spend in-game (especially since I usually leave the game running in the background), but considering that I'm usually done in a bit under 100k standard turns, I can't imagine that I'm spending that much time on the game.

A couple of notes:

1) You should try the "no selling" birth option. It increases the gold you get from money drops, in exchange for making the shopkeepers only ever buy things for 0AU. As a result, you don't have to worry about the cash value of "crappy but good" items you find (like a Spear of Slay Giant, say), and can instead dedicate all of your inventory capacity to potentially-useful items. This also means you can spend less time in town and more time in the dungeon.

2) Don't be afraid to take risks. The game is inherently risky, so the longer you spend playing it, the more likely something is to go horribly badly that you cannot possibly account for through cautious play. On the flipside, you can sometimes greatly speed things up by taking a calculated risk. A handful of calculated risks is better than a hundred unconscious risks any day.

3) The groupthink of the old days was pretty silly. "Don't go past 1650' until your stats are maxed." "Don't go below 2000' without poison resistance." "Don't go below 1000' without basic elemental resistance, FA, and SI." We forced ourselves to do a lot of grinding because we imagined that instant death awaited us if we passed these imaginary thresholds without being sufficiently equipped. How wrong we were. You can dive as much as you like without poison resistance; you just have to avoid poison breathers. Ditto with the basic elemental resistances. FA is a bit harder, since most of the time getting paralyzed will still kill you (though it is marginally less lethal than it used to be, so you might recover). And you need SI as soon as you can't deal with being attacked by monsters you can't see, and not a moment sooner.

[Oramin]

Hmm, I'm a slow/conservative player (but then I've won with most of my recent characters). A couple of months per character averaging between 10 and 20 hours a week - best guess would be between 80 and 160 hours per Winner.

As an example, I've spent the last 10+ hours with my current Mage on levels 97/98 trying to find Kelek's. Could I win without Kelek's? Sure. But it is the principle of the damn thing. My fricking endgame Mages are supposed to have fricking Kelek's and I'm *going* to find it.

Note this is 3.3.2 and they've supposedly fixed the drop rate in the newer versions.